The Belgian Seavolt project, announced earlier this year, is taking concrete shape. The consortium will soon launch its first floating solar panels in Ostend. If the initiators succeed in making solar energy profitable at sea, they hope to turn it into a new Belgian export product.

In March, the Belgian marine engineering companies DEME and Jan De Nul, and the engineering office Tractebel, announced they had jointly developed new floating solar technology capable of operating in harsh marine conditions.

Lifelike conditions

The technology combines the expertise of solar, environmental, and offshore experts. The idea was to set up a test installation off the Belgian coast this summer for experiments.

In the meantime, the final preparations are being made in the port of Ostend. In the coming year, all kinds of tests in lifelike conditions will have to demonstrate that the technology works. In the next phase, the consortium wants to build an even larger platform, with a 35 m x 35 m deck to accommodate 500 solar panels and a combined peak capacity of 250 kW.

Protected from salt deposits

The initiators started working on the project in 2017. They developed a fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) construction because it is three times lighter than steel and not corrosion-resistant.

On the other hand, the price is three times as expensive, and the assembly requires a lot of manual labor. The solar panels will be installed high above the waves to protect them from splashing waves and salt deposits.

Export product?

The demonstration project, an investment of about 3 million euros, is primarily financed by subsidies from the Flemish Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (VLAIO) and the federal government.

Expectations are high, and Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open Vld), Minister of the Nort Sea, hopes that the technology will soon be seen anywhere off the coast of the US or Japan as a Belgian export product.

Viable without subsidies?

The question remains whether the technology will become viable without subsidies. In addition to the technical research, Seavolt conducts a detailed study of the economic potential. According to Jef Monballieu, responsible for offshore development and quoted in the newspaper De Tijd, solar panels at sea are expensive, but the supporting structure is the most significant cost item.

The need for local renewable energy production is increasing drastically, and the complementarity between wind and solar technology has been confirmed worldwide. As authorities allow for multi-use concessions, and the grid infrastructure shows good potential for combined use, adding offshore floating solar to current and future offshore wind sites presents an opportunity to add large volumes of additional renewable energy.